My First Experience Screenprinting

Marisha, my mentor, has been prepping me for screenprinting and the process of it all in the last week or so. I had to finally order two screens (one for fabric printing and the other for printing on paper), learn the process of cleaning and placing emulsion on my screens, and burning the positive images to my screen. It all sounded a little complicated and time consuming to me at first, but the process can be a little therapeutic and I love when I can actually be hands-on every once in a while.

Before, while creating the images, I learned that the simpler the layers, the simpler the workload. Which sounds easy, but for someone who loves color and is used to working through multiple layers on Photoshop, this was a little harder for me. So I decided my first screenprint will be something easy, so that I could get a hang of the process. Initially, I thought, maybe a two-layer print will be simple...but not exactly for someone who overthinks things way too much, like myself. So I decided on a three-layer print of some cute little cacti and succulents. After the image was created, and we finally prepped my screens, we went on to printing! Marisha had a makeshift printing area prepared in her basement, which also helped me to understand how to print without the use of a studio. The steps were pretty simple and very fun to do!